Love Born of Darkness
by tfbl
Summary: It had always been part of his nature, as far as Hannibal could recall. The darkness and the blood, the screams and hunger for human flesh. Being a child of Lucifer and Lilith guaranties it.


Author note: Even though I've worked on this thing for three months this is the best that I've been able to come up with. This is far from my self imposed standers, so I apologize in advance if this sucks. If anyone would like to rewrite this feel free.

Disclaimer: I do not own Hannibal nor the characters. No money is being made.

Love Born of Darkness

It had always been part of his nature, as far as Hannibal could recall. The darkness and the blood, the screams and hunger for human flesh. Being a child of Lucifer and Lilith guaranties it. What it also guarantees, of course, is that when Hannibal falls in love it will end in agony. He expected that, really.

Love. Yes, angles, even those that are the children of the devil himself, can love. The emotion, however, is not the same as humans understand it. For them it is not something that is calm and pure and sweet, quick and fleeting, something that makes them selfless and self sacrificing. No. For them love is dark. Obsessive and raging and all consuming. Terrifying and beautiful and cellular deep. As painful as dissolving in acid and often as gradual as the creation from which everything sprung.

So when Hannibal, small and skinny and covered in dirt, the taste of a human's stomach lingering on his tongue, sees them walking through a field, a male and a female both possessing dark hair, cerulean eyes, and that light that marked them as followers of the Lord, there is no flash. Nothing black and obsessive devouring his young, five year old soul.

Nor is there anything present when they battle years latter, their Creator's war becoming theirs. Nothing except a grudging respect as Hannibal watched them in battle, their pale forms soaked with blood and expressions cold and diamond hard, their swords flashing through the air and slicing through flesh.

Later, much, _much_ later, after the wars had ceased for a time and the deadliest of his Father's creations banished from the human souls that they so craved, Hannibal encounters them once again. The female and her ever present male. The female whose protective nature is almost tangible and the male whose eyes see far, _far_ too much, sees even that which he should not be able to see. Encounters them when his soul is shattering and his inherent darkness spreads like fire throughout his body, the taste of copper in his mouth and the dismembered bodies of his Mother's servants at his feet and the broken form of Mischa_,_ his beloved three year old sister, cradled in his arms. Because the male _sees_ the female _knows_, and as they crouch down next to him and cautiously place a hand upon his heaving back, concern and sympathy pouring off of them in waves, it is something like trust that begins to bloom inside of Hannibal's broken, hallow chest.

Over time? Over the next few millennia and then some?

As Hannibal learns that these two are called William and Alana?

After they strip him down to his bones and see his darkness at its most lethal – white hot rage and organs between his teeth and ravenous hunger and it's all screams and agony coupled with crimson and ebony and shinning silver and it _burns_, burns his very bones to ash - and Hannibal watches them, watches them with his face averted and body clenched and his heart hammering so hard it hurts as he waits for them to turn away – dismiss him and throw him away and it will not be unexpected, no it will not - and yet… yet turn away they do not.

When Hannibal discovers that Alana's favorite creation is flowers while William's are the wild dogs that roam the forests, and they, in turn, learn that Hannibal's pleasure lies in the arts?

At some point when they began to touch one another – an index finger, a hand, the hair and along the neck, a forehead, a hip, the back and breasts and buttocks, the stomach, lips and legs or a head upon a chest – and no one is aware whom it was that first initiated it nor exactly when, but none of them really care as long as it – _they_ – never stop.

When William says, face serious as can be, that he doesn't find Hannibal very interesting and Hannibal confidently replies that William _will_?

As Lilith stands by and watches them, her green eyes sparkling in amusement, as Alana demands that Hannibal and William cease fighting and behave like adults, because the Lord forbid they should ever become friendly!

After Hannibal comes to realize that it does not matter that Alana, despite all the cruelty she's seen and the death she has dealt, still sees the world – naively, many would say - in black and white nor that William constantly resists the siren song of that exquisite darkness residing within himself – a darkens that fits like a puzzle piece to Hannibal's own – because if the circumstances (they) were any different then William and Alana would not be the ones whom Hannibal has come to know. The ones whom he has come to adore.

After they become friends and occasionally take to roaming the skies in their animal forms: William's mongoose, Hannibal's raven feathered stag, and Alana's mare chasing each other without malice or ill intent?

Sometime between Hannibal realizing that his dark haired companies did not mind his hunger for the human swine that he regularly feasted upon and Alana actually threatening Lucifer when the latter slapped William, the dark haired woman's eyes ice cold and diamond hard even as her voice issued forth fire?

When Hannibal comes to realize that he has never been more grateful for Alana and William's ability to compromise, to bend and flow and shift themselves in accordance to the current events – in accordance to _him_, most of the time- , for otherwise they would break. That is something that Hannibal cannot and _will not_ abide by. The fact that within time Hannibal himself begins to compromise in order to fit them, instead of the other way around is not really a surprise.

Between all of that and so, so, _so_ much more?

There grows within Hannibal, within each of them, an emotion. An emotion that is consuming and almost unbearably agonizing, dark and obsessive and as glorious as it is poisons. An emotion that does not seem capable of expanding, for it is already so vast… and yet when _she_ is born to them expand that emotion does. Their daughter, Abigail. Born to them from that emotion and that emotion alone, for despite their apperation for their loves' physical appearance as well as intimate nature of their physical contact neither of them have ever lain with the other, for lust is impossible for ones such as them. She is born to them with a scar on her neck and a missing ear, cobalt eyes and a freckled nose and pale skin, sable locks and chubby limbs flailing about. She is perfect in every way, and as Hannibal looks at her, this infant sleeping quietly in William's arms, he is aware of many things.

Hannibal is aware that the Lord and Lucifer will fight to determine whom Abigail belongs to, whose beings were combined in order to create her. Whom _owns_ her. He is aware that he, Alana, and William will have different views on how best to raise Abigail, that they will likely fight and take wrong turns along the way. Hannibal is aware that eventually, one or both of their creators will try to take Abigail. That they willCommand them to give her up.

What Hannibal is also aware of?

That it does not matter whom created Abigail, which of them she is a mixture of. Alana is her mother and he and William are her fathers. She is theirs and nothing will ever change that. Hannibal is aware that they will reach a compromise regarding Abigail's life lessons and that when that Command is issued, the Word of their creators that is almost, _almost_ impossible to ignore, so deeply it is ingrained within them? Ignore it they shall. Ignore it and fight against it with swords and teeth and bloodshed and their very lives if need be, for that darkness? That all consuming, crimson soaked, dangerous, and obsessive love that binds he, Alana, and William together? It is even darker, even stronger in regards to Abigail.

They raise her of course, their daughter. Abigail learns of the creations and wars before she can speak, and battle techniques and Mahler's Symphony No. 9 is embedded within her before the written language is taught. She and William run with wolf packs and she stands shoulder to shoulder with her mother in a field of flowers, the blooms gleaming jewel bright amidst the dark strands. With Hannibal it is sculptures and wine, appreciating the monsters that lurk in the dark and knives that are bloodied coupled with frozen eyes when daemons claws seek to take her life. She is smart and kind with a backbone of steel and an inherent appreciation for beauty and light as well as darkness. She can gutt a human as easily as she can cast a fishing line and smiles when she sees the adoration in her parents eyes, regardless at whom it is aimed.

Selfish? Yes, this love they share is that as well.

For when the Command is finally issued – seventeen years? seventeen thousand? doesn't matter for it is all the same – and all three of them defy their creators and refuse to give up Abigail, refuse to untangle her soul from theirs? As Alana, William and Abigail are cursed and cast from Heaven to the earth far below, countless human lives and millions of human memories forced upon them in an almost infinite cycle? A cycle that will renew itself once their "death" takes place and will cease only when the seven horsemen finally see fit to descend? When the Lord takes that dark foundation of their love and twists it, morphs and defiles it into something truly _vile_, something that will forever remain between them but will be so overshadowed by deceit and violence and fear and bloodshed and so much ugliness that the love – the adoration- they once shared will be nearly impossible?

Hannibal follows.

He follows even though Lilith had Commanded him otherwise, even though he alone would have been spared.

Follows even as Flauros's claws rake his body and his Father screams with fury.

Follows even though he had promised the three of them that he would not. That he, Hannibal, would spare himself the torment and the rendering of his soul and remain above them until the world's end.

He follows them even as he glimpses the forms of Lilith's head servants, Tobias and Garret, watching him with hungry eyes and razor teeth bared, their desire for his and Abigail's souls and flesh finally within their grasp.

Hannibal leaps after them – those three that hold his soul in their hands- even though he knows that down there in the human realm there will be nothing and no one to temper his darkness and that, should he ever encounter his daughter or his beloveds in any lifetime, not only will he hold no recollection of them but that he will likely seek to destroy them and that love – given as well as received – will be an extremely slim possibitly.

Yes. Hannibal, a child of darkness and blood and sin follows them because he would rather live in agony and wait forever for that slim chance to occur regardless of their – soon to be previous - emotions on the matter, for where _they_ are concerned, Hannibal is as selfish as they come.

END


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